


Hallowed be thy name

by kameo_chan



Category: Boondock Saints (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-06
Updated: 2012-04-06
Packaged: 2017-11-03 04:19:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/377121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kameo_chan/pseuds/kameo_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noah MacManus has been called many things, but above all else, he wishes to be called a father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hallowed be thy name

He’s always wondered what it would feel like to raise his sons like a normal man might. For many long years he’d dreamed of kissing skinned knees better and giving piggy-back rides while the world outside the confines of concrete walls and solid steel bars changed beyond both memory and recognition. On the inside of a prison cell, time had little meaning other than another grey streak in his hair or another wrinkle lining a face grown hard from a lifetime’s worth of exacting swift and merciless justice.

For many years, he’d thought of writing his boys and their Ma, of telling them things he knew she either wouldn’t or couldn’t. But it never happened. He’d find himself sitting on his cot, pen in hand and not a single word to commit to paper. Nothing ever seemed worth the time it took to say once he got as far as an introduction. And it seemed that no matter how he phrased things, it always came down to a single, ineffable point. 

_Hello boys_ , he’d write. Or, _Dear Connor and Murphy_. In the end though, there was just no good way of telling his children that he’d been locked away like a feral animal for making an honest job out of what the Good Lord Himself had been doing since time immemorial. Besides, what use would two healthy young boys have for the words of a father who would never see them become men? After the tenth attempt, he gave up on writing completely. 

Instead, he dreamed. Of receiving report cards, and helping out with homework. Of teaching his sons their bedtime prayers and attending Mass with them. Of watching their first football match and sorting out the inevitable fist fights he knew were bound to follow. They were Irish lads, born to Irish folk and though he did not like propagating stereotypes about his country and his people, he knew that the same fire would flow through their veins as still flowed through his. _Erin go bragh_ , as his father had always said when in his cups. Long live the fatherland. 

And all the while, the world kept turning like a water mill. It forgot about a man who had once been called the most dangerous individual on the planet, forgot about the Duke just as he forgot the face of a loving wife and the happy gurgles of precocious sons and a life he’d had to leave behind when his past finally caught up to him. And in a way, he was glad to forget and be forgotten, because it meant that his boys had found a life of their own to live, a far cry from his own. That was what he told himself, when the nights grew unbearably long and lonely.

But then had come the parole board and a new contract, and like a compass needle pointing due North, he’d walked right into the biggest mess of them all. They’d worn dark pea coats and carried Berettas and did the Lord’s work with fiery Irish fervour. Trouble had found him in the form of his boys, older and bolder and with balls big and brass as you please. 

He’d realized soon after that, as he watched Murphy bandage his brother’s leg, that there was still a lot of raising to be done, if only not the kind he’d always dreamed of doing. Boys being boys needed a father to care for them and provide for them and keep their faith for them when it seemed that the whole world was turned against them. It didn’t matter that Murphy’s eyes were cold and calculating at first or that Connor’s limp set his heart to aching each time he recalled their first fateful meeting. 

The Good Book always spoke of shepherds tending their flocks. It occurred to him not long after first seeing his sons again that even the wolves who preyed upon the wicked might be in need of shepherding in the eyes of the Lord God Almighty, every now and then. And terrible father though he might have been in all other aspects, Noah MacManus was a humble man who had long since made right with his God. 

_Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for such is the kingdom of heaven_ , Jesus had preached once. Noah would heed those words, even if it killed him. No sons of his would ever be without their father again to guide and guard them so long as there was breath in his lungs and conviction in his heart. 

This time, he knew, he would be there every step of the way until the bitter, bloody end.


End file.
